


Equivalent Exchange

by AU Mer-Maid (neonstardust)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: 69, Birthday Fluff, Birthday Presents, Don't Let The Tags Fool You This Is Safe For Work, Established Relationship, Kinktober 2019, Sixty-nine, Wholesome Safe For Work Content In My Kinktober? Heck Yeah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-25 16:50:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20915378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonstardust/pseuds/AU%20Mer-Maid
Summary: Shirabu knew the moment he saw the giant box that it would not contain a giant present, but instead, a giant mess of trouble he most definitely did not wish for when blowing out the birthday cake candles.





	Equivalent Exchange

**Author's Note:**

> Kinktober Day 5 - Prompt: 69

“I swear by all that I hold dear, I will strangle you until the life leaves your eyes,” Shirabu vows. Righteous fury burns through his veins. Stabbing the knife into the box, he tears through the tape. Inside, he, with absolutely no surprise left within him, finds another box.

Yahaba nods and checks off his list. “That is number thirty-three.”

“Where did you get thirty-three boxes,” Shirabu seethes.

“Places.” Yahaba shrugs. “Keep going. We got a long way to go.” He winks. Shirabu hits him with the box.

Adjusting his grip on the knife, Shirabu cuts through the next one, and the one after that, and the one after that. His back hurts. Sitting down on the couch, he pulls out yet another box that is undoubtedly full of many more smaller boxes, each sealed with several layers of packing tape.

Shirabu kicks the growing mountain of cardboard at his feet. “We don’t have room for all this!”

Yahaba ignores him. “Oh, this one’s forty.”

“Forty.” Shirabu viciously tears open the lid. He grabs the slightly smaller box within and yanks it out. Rose petals fall across his lap. Before he can react, a camera flashes, and his face burns. 

Yahaba tucks his phone away safely just as Shirabu tackles him. “Delete it,” he hisses.

“No.” Yahaba shoves him off, but Shirabu latches onto his arm, pulling him down with him. They collapse on the floor in a tangle of limbs.

Tile cools Shirabu’s cheek. His lungs burn for air, trapped beneath Yahaba’s weight. He’s too exhausted to fight, so he relaxes against the floor, allowing Yahaba to shift into a more comfortable position. “Just tell me what’s in the last box.”

Yahaba’s eyes shine; whether with love or evil, Shirabu isn’t sure. “It’s a _surprise_, Kenji.”

“I hate you,” Shirabu sighs.

Yahaba kisses his nose. “Love you, too.”

“I can’t feel my hand.”

“Oh.” Untangling their legs, Yahaba crawls off him. Feeling returns to Shirabu’s hand, alerting him that it is bent at an awkward angle beneath the coffee table, but he doesn’t move. A birthday gift isn’t worth this level of effort.

Sensing his resignation, Yahaba drops the next box on Shirabu’s stomach. A few rose petals cling to the sides. Shirabu sighs through his nose and grabs his knife. “If there’s nothing in the last box, I swear”—he points the knife at him, too far away to actually be intimidating.

“Yeah, yeah, life leaves my eyes. I got the gist of it.” Yahaba helps him sit up.

Shirabu eyes the new box skeptically before carving his way through the tape. His fingers hurt. When he pulls the next box out from its depths, no flower petals fall out, and it encourages him to continue onward.

“How long did this take you to do?” he asks. The larger boxes have thankfully run out. The smaller ones fit in his hands more easily, allowing him to tear through them faster.

“We don’t talk about that,” Yahaba says.

The forty-fifth box is packed with love letters. They scatter across the tile, proclaiming their secrets to the ceiling. Shirabu doesn’t read them all, but he arranges them into a neat pile to go through later, when his hands aren’t sore and his thoughts aren’t full of murderous intentions.

Permanent market darkens the side of each box. Shirabu traces his thumb over the words, connecting each story. The forty-sixth box says “April six years ago, I asked you out.” The forty-eighth box reminds him that they’ve broken eight lamps since moving in together.

Shirabu slowly catches onto the number game Yahaba is playing. By the fiftieth box, he’s prepared for something to fall out, but not for it to be the button he gave Yahaba during high school graduation. “You kept this?”

The smile Yahaba gives him glows like a sunrise, warm and beautiful and promising great things ahead. “You recognized it.”

Shirabu curls protective fingers around the button, setting it aside with the letters for safe keeping.

The writing on box number fifty-two tells the story of the two friendship bracelets they exchanged. Setting it aside and tearing open the next box, he scans a brief summary of the time Shirabu brought home three kittens, complete with a hand drawn picture of each cat.

Shirabu glances at the three full grown cats nestled together by the window and pretends not to feel something stir in his chest. Quickly, he slices through the next box, hesitating only when he reaches box sixty.

The boxes have gotten progressively smaller, this one not much bigger than a large shoebox and half as long. When he pulls it out, he finds the bottom of the previous box filled with old photos of them taken together inside of various purikura machines.

Shirabu sets them with the love letters. “You went all out.” On top of the pile, he sees his younger self, still wearing his Shiratorizawa uniform. A younger Yahaba flips him off in the first photo only to kiss his cheek in the second. Heart stickers float around their heads.

“Birthdays call for grand gestures,” Yahaba says. He keeps his voice nonchalant, but it raises Shirabu’s suspicions.

Boxes sixty-one to sixty-four fall by his feet one by one, walking him through a journey of the first time Yahaba said “I love you” to the unfortunate Sickpocalypse that costed them both four days of work when Yahaba refused to leave Shirabu’s side for even a moment.

Shirabu pulls out box sixty-five slowly. They’ve gotten remarkably smaller, this one not even the size of a butter tub, signaling that his torment is coming to an end. Tapped to the bottom, he finds the tickets from the first concert they went to see together.

Something builds in his stomach, big and strange, an indescribable mix of fear and anticipation. The next box reminds him of their six-day long movie marathon during spring break. The one after that tells him the date they first met, seven years ago.

The sixty-eighth box rattles in his hands.

Yahaba checks off the number on his list, but the pen shakes, his hand trembling. Like water overflowing through a ship, Shirabu knows the feeling brewing in his stomach, growing bigger and bigger until his chest feels like it will burst, is affecting Yahaba, too.

The box fits neatly in his palm. It’s too small to be written on, so Yahaba drew a heart instead. Shirabu peels back the tape with care. By his calculations, the seventieth box will be the most stunning of all.

Shirabu opens the lid. Inside, he finds box sixty-nine, not made of corrugated cardboard, but a rich red velvet.

His stomach drops. Hands shaking, he pulls it out. There are no hidden surprises or nostalgic messages with this one. Before he even opens it, he knows there will be no seventieth box inside. Yahaba always had a way of surprising him, getting past his defenses in the most unexpected of ways, but with his mind both buzzing with thoughts and startlingly empty all at the same time, he clings to the one question he can find. “Why not seventy?”

Yahaba smiles sheepishly. “I miscounted.”

“You idiot.” His chest burns, and he clutches the box tight. “You absolute moron.”

Yahaba crawls onto the floor in front of him. “Those are fighting words,” he says, voice wavering too much to be challenging. Carefully, he places his hands on Shirabu’s and opens the box.

An engagement ring sparkles, simple yet beautiful. Shirabu’s chest constricts so tight he can’t breathe.

“Happy birthday, Kenji.” Taking out the ring, Yahaba sets the box aside. “I wasted your time with sixty-nine boxes.”

“A crime,” Shirabu agrees.

“As punishment”—Yahaba slides the ring onto his finger—”will you stay with me for the next sixty-nine years of our lives?”

A lump forms in Shirabu’s throat, hard to speak around. “We won’t live that long,” Shirabu whispers.

“Is that a deal?” Yahaba asks.

Shirabu tackles him, this time in a hug that will surely leave bruises in the morning.

“Yes, you idiot.”

“_Your_ idiot.”

“Yeah. My idiot.”


End file.
